Category: Lasalle

Lasalle is the first game in the HONOUR series by Sam Mustafa set in the Napoleonic Wars. Players take the role of a brigade or division commander. Lasalle has quickly become quite popular in the wargaming community. I purchased my copy as a potential set for the South American Wars of Liberation.

I want to try Napoleon at War (NAW) for Liberators and one of the first questions is … what do I do about my Big Bases? Luckily Phil from Wargaming in the Sun has some useful suggestions for using units based for Lasalle / FoGN with Napoleon at War. I can just add to his analysis to cope with my 2 x 80mm x 40mm basing.

I was talking to John Fletcher and he mentioned most people who play Liberators choose the 1817-18 campaign, like I did. So I’m determined to refight other battles, hopefully all of them eventually. But to start with here is a catalogue of the scenarios.

I’m interested in using Lasalle for the South American Wars of Liberation. In that theatre infantry, when faced by superior cavalry, would often head for rough terrain. But the standard Lasalle rules don’t encourage this – the cavalry will just charge into the rough after the infantry. So I’m exploring a house rule to rectify the problem.

Francisco Erize did some thinking about Lasalle for South American Wars of Independence. He called the result “Necoechea” after Mariano Necochea, an Argentinean general of the wars. The words are Francisco’s.

Reading the Lasalle Forum it quickly becomes clear that a common game tactic is to mass Attack Columns against defending Lines. That in turn means that defenders abandon Line and commonly deploy in Attack Column themselves.

The problem with all of this is that is completely unhistorical. Historically Attack Columns were expected to deploy into Line when they got to musketry range so left enough room between units to allow this.

Personally I find the unhistorical sight of massed Attack Columns offensive and I want a game mechanism to prevent or discourage it. The Lasalle Forum has a bunch

I outrageously copied the content of this scenario from Francisco’s Lasalle Scenario from Cold Wars 2011. All I did was put it in my standard scenario format. So, after this paragraph, all references to “I” means Francisco.

Francisco of Argentina and Texas has done some thinking about Lasalle for South American War of Independence. He calls the variant “Necoechea” after a renowned Argentine cavalry commander of the war. One of the first things Francisco tried was a variant of Chacabuco. I have fairly cheekily reproduced it here. Note: this is not the same “Alternative Chacabuco” that John Fletcher published.